Various systems for reinforcing building structural components have been proposed. Typically, the systems include one or more stirrups and a series of reinforcing bars, which are combined to form a cage-like apparatus. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,293,071 (Konstantinidis) discloses a system for reinforcing load bearing building elements. U.S. Pat. No. 6,293,071 describes a system that includes a stirrup with a plurality of windings in combination with reinforcement bars. U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0257482 (Gallucchio) discloses a system that employs a single continuous stirrup along with a plurality of reinforcement bars. The stirrup may be compressed for ease of transport. Finally, U.S. Patent Application No. 2006/0207211 (Yin) discloses a system with a number of spiral stirrups, each having a series of reinforcing bars.
Systems for reinforcing building structural components may be used with insulated concrete formwork or block masonry. Insulated concrete formwork typically includes webs that join the insulation panels orientated on both sides of the concrete formwork, while block masonry includes webs that join the face shells of the blocks. As such, normally, rigid individual stirrups and reinforcing longitudinal bars must be placed during the construction of the insulated concrete formwork or concrete masonry. A limitation of the prior art structural systems is that the complex combination of stirrup reinforcement and longitudinal reinforcing bars formed into reinforcing cages cannot be used for subsequent construction of insulated concrete formwork or block masonry. A further limitation of the prior art systems is that they employ a complex combination of stirrups and reinforcing bars that cannot be simply inserted into existing insulated concrete formwork or block masonry. Further, because of the complexity of the prior art systems, adjusting the angles, length and height of the cage formed by the stirrup or stirrups and the reinforcing bars, when those components are formed, is time consuming.